Inventing Human Rights: History, A

Description:
Human rights is a concept that only came to the forefront during the eighteenth century. When the American Declaration of Independence declared 'all men are created equal' and the French proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they were bringing a new guarantee into the world. Professor Lynn Hunt questions why it happened then and how such a revelation came to pass. In this extraordinary work of cultural and intellectual history, she grounds the creation of human rights in the changes that authors brought to literature, the rejection of torture as a means of finding out truth and the spread of empathy. Hunt traces the amazing rise of rights, their momentous eclipse in the nineteenth century and their culmination as a principle with the United Nations' proclamation in 1948. She finishes this work with a diagnosis of the state of human rights today.

Review:
'This is a wonderful history of the emergence and development of the powerful idea of human rights, written by one of the leading historians of our time.' Amartya Sen '...a rich, elegant and persuasive essay... there is much to be learned by drawing connections between the political events that shaped modern politics and the literary developments that shaped modern sensibilities.' London Review of Books 'A tour de force.' The New York Times Book Review 'To connect human rights to social history in this way is an original and interesting approach to the subject... She offers a lively and informative history.' Wall Street Journal 'Hunt's survey is fast-paced, provocative and ultimately optimistic. Declarations, she writes, are not empty words but transformative; they make us want to become the people they claim we are.' The New Yorker'

Author Biography:
LYNN HUNT is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at UCLA. She is the author of many works and the co-author of Telling the Truth About History (ISBN 978 0 393 31286 7).